


Category Ten: Angel and Chekov

by beetle



Category: Angel: the Series, Star Trek
Genre: Crossover, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-17
Updated: 2013-05-17
Packaged: 2017-12-12 03:21:41
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,093
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/806611
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/beetle/pseuds/beetle
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>No real summary, just the rules of the meme used to produce this piece.<br/>The Rules:<br/>1. Pick a character, pairing, or fandom you like.<br/>2. Turn on your music player and put it on random/shuffle.<br/>3. Write a drabble/ficlet related to each song that plays. You only have the time frame of the song to finish the drabble; you start when the song starts, and stop when it's over. No lingering afterwards!<br/>4. Do ten of these, then post them.</p>
<p>Fandom: AtS/ST:XI crossover (present day)<br/>Character(s): Angel/Chekov<br/>Rating: NC-17</p>
            </blockquote>





	Category Ten: Angel and Chekov

**Author's Note:**

> Notes/Warnings: Vague spoilers for Ats "Not Fade Away."

**Bush: Swallowed**

  
  
Moscow's devouring him, and he likes that. Though the speed at which it does so leaves much to be desired.  
  
But he likes that the kind of loneliness, ennui, and suicidal self-determinism that's only to be found true international cities will likely be the death of him, masked as old age, if he's careful.  
  
He thinks it's ironic that this time, a city will be the death of  _him_ , will touch him with cold fingers and leave him too chilled to carry on. He likes irony because it's the only kind of humor he's ever really gotten.  
  


*

  
  
Nearly five years he's been here, and the cold of the city's been nibbling at his extremities, licking his bones.  
  
Sooner or later, it'll get sick of teasing and tasting. It will swallow him whole.  
  
  


**Leonard Cohen: First We Take Manhattan, Then We Take Berlin**

  
  
The first time he sees the boy, huddled in nothing but ugly, filthy pajamas at the mouth of a freezing, stinking alley, all he can think is:  _somewhere in the world, I have a son who's older than this kid._  
  
He spends minutes standing, staring at the boy, whose pale skin is  _so_  pale, it's blue, almost the same shade as the eyes that finally blink, and  _notice_  him.  
  
“Please,” the boy says, and then nothing else. There  _needs_  to be something else after a  _please_ , like  _give me some money_ , or  _give me some food_ , or just a plain old-fashioned  _help me_.  
  
But there was a time that  _please_  was all he needed to hear to have him invested, willing to brave all to help a stranger. Especially one so young, so afraid, so lost it radiates off of him like fever-heat. . . .  
  
But he's not that person anymore. He doesn't play that game. He stays out of other people's affairs.  
  
He lets the beat of his heart drown out the words that don't come from those chapped lips, with their chattering, perfect teeth. Turns away from the boy and walks away.  
  
It's best, he's decided, to stay out of other people's affairs.  
  
It's only a shame the world is  _filled_  with other people.  
  
  


**Statician(cover of Travis's): Slideshow**

  
  
They're all alive, and that's why his heart, strange, foreign thing, is beating so damn fast.  
  
Gunn is grinning, big and bright, his arm slung around Wes, like it hadn't ever gone anywhere. Fred is chatting with Lorne, who glances at him and  _smiles_. And Connor is a babe in arms—only arms that mean him well. Never arms that mean him a hell dimension, no. Cordelia's-—they're all--  
  
\--a dream.  
  
A  _nightmare_.  
  
He's up and out of bed, heels of his hands pressed into his eyes, insufficient to stop the slideshow of never-ever-happened that's playing behind his eyelids. But they play on, mental snapshot after mental snapshot.  
  
Neverminding the sweat that's soaked through his sweatpants and t-shirt, he jams his feet into his boots and pulls on his coat. The hat and scarf he rarely remembers are forgotten again. Are left behind.  
  
Soon, the city will drive away  _their_  faces, too.  
  
  


**Seven Mary Three: Cumbersome**

  
  
The streets all look the same to him, day or night.  
  
He sees the Moscow of a hundred years ago, superimposed over the Moscow of today. Wishes he could step out of this time, into that one. That he could be in a time where he belongs. Could relive a past gone so wrong.  
  
He wishes he'd died in Darla's arms.  
  
Sometimes, standing on bridges, looking into the dark waters below, he thinks jumping would be like falling asleep in her arms. Cold, forgiving, but utterly merciless. Hard and soft. He thinks that it'd be the only comfort he could expect from the life he wanted so badly, was given so recently, and doesn't know what to do with.  
  
He wishes he could toss that life and soul in the river and lose himself in Angelus, sometimes. Wishes. . . .  
  
That wishes still came true for him.  
  
  


**Garbage: Push It**

  
  
“Excuse me.”  
  
He doesn't look over. In the weeks since he first saw the boy,  _someone_  has helped him. He's no longer freezing and blue in silly pajamas. Instead, he's clean and innocent-looking in a big ugly parka and too-big blue jeans.  
  
There's no need to look at the kid again. He's been everywhere, lately—real and imagined.  
  
But he finds himself looking up, anyway, at pretty, slightly chapped lips that are all too frequently swiped by a pale-pink tongue.  
  
The boy's voice is lost in the general hum of the a busy corner, of the city and everyone in it. Of every heartbeat there is, ever was, or will ever be. Whatever he's saying can't be important. And even if it is, it's just other people's affairs. To be avoided.  
  
“--could you help me--”  
  
“Help yourself.”  
  
“--directions to the University? I'm not familiar with the city anymore!”  
  
He lets the crowd carry him across the street, but it's most of a minute before city noise drowns the kid out.  
  
Funny thing is, he can still hear that soft voice for hours after.  
  
  


**Rufus Wainwright: Hallelujah**

  
  
The kid's chapped lips taste like something sweet—banana splits, maybe. Whipped cream, chocolate, ice cream--  
  
He's never tasted anything  _half_  so sweet, and wants that mouth everywhere. Pushes the kid down to his knees, never looking away from eyes the color of the Moscow sky at noon.  
  
Runs his hands through thick, soft curls and tugs on them, pulling the kid's innocent mouth down his cock, and pushing it off. Lather, rinse, repeat, till he's ready to come, and soft, scared moans ease past his cock, and swollen red lips. Those guileless blue eyes are red and wet, and the kid's chest is hitching like he can't get enough air, and it's perfect, everything Angelus's been needing for six years. . . .  
  
This time when he wakes up, he's too limp and devastated to take his woes to the river. Anyway, he knows there's no putting this life, this guilt, this  _want_  down.  
  
  


**Garbage: #1 Crush**

  
  
For a few months, there are dreams.  
  
Sometimes, just regular wet dreams. Other times, they're the kind of dreams Angelus would have made a reality. But in either case, they star that damn kid, who seems to be  _everywhere_ , now. In the library, at his favorite coffee house, in his favorite park. It's like being stalked, only wherever he goes, the kid is there first, with or without friends, pink-cheeked and pretty, his eyes always, at some point searching, searching. . . .  
  
Finding.  
  
And always he smiles, a slow, knowing thing that's different from the smiles he has for his little university friends, all glasses-wearing physicist types. All Freds and Willows, with a few Wesleys thrown in for good measure.  
  
This smile is a smile meant only for the two of them.  
  
 _We are both strangers here,_  it says. And if it seems to offer a place  _to_  fit in, someone  _to_  be known to. . . .  
  
  


**Morphine: Candy**

  
  
He  _does_ , however, still have days during which he thinks about something other than the kid. When there's no one to bump into at the park, but the mumbling old men he sometimes plays chess with. No one at the library but the librarians who, despite his silence and care with the books seem, to a man or woman, to disapprove of him.  
  
There are days, when it's rainy, or too cold, or snowy, that he's one of a few die-hards in the coffee house, soaking up warmth, silence, and atmosphere, as well as caffeine.  
  
Days like this, it's safe to let himself remember this one's laugh, or that one's way of talking. This one's bravado, that one's coyness. This one's hair and that one's smile. Empathy, sympathy, malarky. Family, a thing that no longer exists, and will never again exist for him. But that's not a bad thing . . . simply a true one. Because for everything, there is a season.  
  
Oh, yes, there are days when he can smile—or even laugh to himself, and if tears sometimes run down his face, too, there's no one to notice, or care.  
  
Or there wasn't.  
  
When the boy sits at his table one day, smiling with nothing but his eyes, his mouth a determined pink line . . . it's impossible to find the will to ask him to leave.  
  
He seems happy to stay.  
  
  


**Travis: Closer**

  
  
Somehow,  _somehow_ , the boy insinuates himself into every facet, every area of his life.  
  
Some mornings, he shows up at the diner for a greasy breakfast. Some evenings, he'll be waiting outside of the apartment, a wool-clad string-bean with a cap over those light-brown curls. For some reason, that's heart-stopping, that the kid waits like that, but only for a moment. Because the kid's all happy, excited eyes and chattiness. Like Fred only,  _somehow_ , smarter.  
  
The kind of smart that scares the  _hell_  out of anyone who's intelligent enough to realize just how smart this kid is. Of course, there are few people who're even  _that_  intelligent.  
  
He's not scared of the kid. Doesn't care about those smarts, other than they make conversation interesting. The kid talks about things like String Theory—which he finds hilarious—and time travel. Alternate universes and wormholes.  
  
Spaceships.  
  
Sometimes, there's more than a little Xander Harris in him, but that's not so bad, these days.  
  
These days . . . sometimes the kid takes him to dinner. More times than  _not_ , as time goes on.  
  
He sees the kid's dormroom exactly thirty-seven days before the kid sees his apartment. He's not surprised the kid's a bit of a slob, and, in his turn, the kid's not surprised that  _his_  apartment is mostly unfurnished, and that there's nothing in his refrigerator but Macallan, mustard, and a tupperware bowl full of something that's been there since he moved in.  
  
“Ick—I'll take you shopping, and then we'll make a home-cooked meal,” the kid says firmly, tossing the tupperware bowl into the trash without opening it.  
  
Staring down into those eyes, watching that little tongue-tip lick lips he's been wanting to lick, himself, there's really nothing to do but nod, and let himself be dragged out the door.  
  
  


**Travis(cover of Britney Spears's): Hit Me Baby One More Time**

  
  
Then, with almost no warning, the kid is gone.  
  
Not at his dorm, at the coffee house, at the library, or park. Not anywhere.  
  
After a few days, it's time to accept the inevitable. That everyone leaves, sooner or later, till he's the only one left. No matter how right the kid looked on the backdrop of the apartment. Cooking in the kitchen. Standing in the entryway, face tilted up as if waiting to be kissed, but never looking disappointed when he wasn't, merely patient and amused.  
  
When the kid was there, the apartment had felt like a place to  _live in_ , not a place in which to mark time until . . . whatever's coming down the pike comes.  
  
And there's always  _something_.  
  
(Like being crushed by abject loneliness, even as he's bearing up under it, for instance.)  
  
“I'm from the future,” the kid had said softly, big, bright eyes anxious for the first time since that day in the alley, all those months ago. Then he'd produced a little pewter broach that looked like a weird letter A.  
  
“My badge. The badge that's going to help get me back to the exact moment I left,” he'd said, shifting from foot to foot in the entryway. He was never this nervous when waiting to be kissed, but he was, in fact, more beautiful than ever. And that was saying a lot. “I would . . . like it if you came with me.”  
  
But in the end, he'd neither kissed the kid, nor believed him. Nor agreed to go to the future with him. Had let the kid go back to his messy, cluttered dormroom looking, for the first time in their acquaintance, disappointed.  
  
A few days later--days in which the kid was busy, distracted, and far more tired than usual--he was gone, all his junk and gizmos left behind, all his clothes, even.  
  
There was no letter, no sign, no anything to be found before the dormroom was readied for the next student. No soft, laughing voice to drown out the ticking time-bomb in his chest.  
  
So he went back to his empty apartment, his parks, his library, his coffee house. Moscow nibbles on his bones, the cold makes a home in his marrow, and it's all very ironic that the hero's the one who dies a thousand times, after all.


End file.
